Boom

The make-or-break sequence is the terrazzo dinner by candlelight between Elizabeth Taylor's Sissy Goforth and Noël Coward's Witch of Capri—you either dub her Medusa-chandelier headdress "camp" and call it a day (Lord knows, the reviewers did), or you suddenly grasp the rich humor of a Zeami piece enacted by expatriates on a Mediterranean rock. Joseph Losey opens with a Panavision sprawl of the tumultuous beachfront and turns it into a vertical widescreen slit by slowly tracking backwards through a narrow window, the island is presided over by "the bloody bitch of the world" first seen in a swift flurry of talismans (champagne glass, diamond ring, injection). Pet monkey, caged bird, sitars and Easter island statuettes and dwarf bodyguard (Michael Dunn) with hounds, thus the villa as objet d'art. Among the abused personnel, the secretary (Joanna Shimkus) takes dictation for the queen's memoirs: "I want to start this chapter on a more serious note: The Meaning of Life." Into this stumbles Angelo Della Morte (Richard Burton), poet and "professional houseguest," in samurai robe and wielding sword and little black book filled with rich dead ladies, "a man who has lost many friends." Last Year at Marienbad by way of Tennessee Williams, in other words, and there's Teorema around the same time. Burton gives Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" the full sonorousness it deserves, "Whaaat?" is his paramour's squawking reply—a mystical case for euthanasia, the union of oneiric opposites played to the hilt by a grand troupe of comedians. (Taylor's performance is particularly remarkable as a midpoint between Tallulah Bankhead and Divine.) The world and the mind, "the shock of each moment of still being alive," the purest Losey mise en scène. A brilliant film, or rather a brilliant "sen-sation," by erudite artists who heed the Witch's warning about jokes taken too seriously. Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe.